By the time the abominable thing came past my window, amidst singing and band-playing and cheering, most of the poor children were swinging unconscious from the rays of the great sun which jolted heavily at every turn it made. It was a disgusting sight; but we were the only people to notice it and be shocked by it.
While at Naples, I was ordered to go to Rome to congratulate the new Pope, Pius the Ninth, whose election had just taken place, in the name of France. I started off at once, by Civita Vecchia, and reached the palace of our embassy at Rome at night. At dawn a great noise made me hastily open my window, anxious to know the reason of the uproar, and also to get a first look at the Eternal City, where I was for the first time in my life. It was raining, and the inhabitants of all the adjacent houses, as well as the soldiers in the barracks over the way, were all shouting at the top of their voices Acqua! Acqua! Acqua! It sounded as if every cockatoo in Australia had settled upon the papal city.
The rain had been long in its coming, it appears. But my first impression of Rome was not a very inspiring one. And, indeed, I had little opportunity of getting any others.
To mark the fact that I had come to the city solely on the Pope's account, I only stayed two days, so that I saw nothing except the Pope himself, or I rushed by everything else I was shown so hurriedly, that it came to the same thing. During those forty-eight hours I was the sole property of our embassy, and I could not have been in better hands. We had representatives who were worthy of the name, in those days,—real diplomats.
The ambassador was M. Rossi, my former teacher, a man of generous feeling and high intelligence, who was soon to be the victim of one of the most cowardly crimes ever perpetrated by the revolutionary tribe. The secretary to the embassy was the present Due de Broglie. By these two gentlemen I was conducted into the Pope's presence. Being very ignorant of the proper ceremonial to follow, I asked M. Rossi what I was to call his Holiness.
"Tres chaint Pere, ou cha Chaintete," he answered, with an accent which
I took good care not to imitate.
Having gone past the fine Swiss Guard, in their sixteenth-century dress, and their officer in helmet and cuirass, and then past the Guardia Nobile, and a huge staff of ecclesiastics in violet robes, I bent low before the sovereign pontiff, and kissed his ring with deep emotion. Raising my eyes, I saw a handsome old man, tall in stature, with a kind face, dressed all in white, to whom I delivered the message of which I was the bearer. At that moment I had a glimpse of a fair dream, which M. Rossi endeavoured to realise at a later date. It was to make a close alliance between France and a Confederation of all the Italian States—our allies already by relationship between the reigning families, or by community of interest of all kinds—under the protectorate of the Pope, at once our devoted friend and the head of the Catholic religion all over the whole world. But the fair dream was never to come true. Its patriotic promoter, M. Rossi, fell under the assassin's hand, and every passion—revolutionary, anti-religious, and anti-French—joined hands to make it fail. In its place we have Italian unity and a dethroned Pope.
After a pleasant evening at the embassy, with Cardinal Gizzi, Monsignore de Falloux, the Princes and Princesses of the Massimo family, and a very charming young lady, Princess Rospigliosi, sister to a naval cadet attached to my staff, named Champagny, who afterwards became the Due de Cadore, I returned to Naples by the Pontine Marshes and Terracina, where the strains of Auber's Fra Diavolo kept springing to my lips.
The squadron remained in Neapolitan waters until the festival of Pie di Grotta, on which occasion the King took me with him to a great review he held—a very noisy and lively scene it was—in the Toledo, the great artery of the town, with its picturesque vistas on to Vesuvius. The National Guard was of modern growth, and lamentable at that. Then came the regular army, and especially four Swiss regiments with their artillery, a magnificent division of troops. As long as they are here, I said to myself, there need be no fear of revolutions. But just because their valour and fidelity promised a reception little to the taste of the sedition-mongers, those prudent modern condottieri were waving their warlike pens, and loudly demanding the disembodiment of these very regiments. It pained me to notice the icy reception given to the brave fellows as they marched past, and I could not help feeling a gloomy foreboding.
That sheet anchor of the Neapolitan Monarchy was destroyed before long by one of those compromises with rebellion so frequent in these days—disastrous proceedings, which inevitably lead the way by their evil and demoralising example, to other compromises, infinitely more lamentable, alas!—I mean compromise with a foreign enemy.